Keith’s Corner — “’Tis The Season”

Keith’s Corner — “’Tis The Season”

By Keith Coursin, President, Desert Aire

The summer months in North America are typically a less hectic period for HVAC manufacturers. There are employee vacations, lulls in the annual cycle of project planning and startups as well as yearly planned maintenance and retooling shutdowns. But with Desert Aire's unrelenting focus on customers and the development of engineered solutions, there is no quiet time or pressing the pause button. Instead, Desert Aire is engaged in a series of activities this summer that champion the needs of the HVAC industry and bolster our ability to provide customers with indoor climate control solutions. Here is a review of how we’re spending our summer.

ASHRAE Annual Conference, June 2017, Long Beach, CA

Craig Burg, Desert Aire's director of engineering and Channing Evert, Regional Sales Manager, participated in several meetings in Long Beach. Craig is a voting member, former committee chair and current Standard Subcommittee chair for ASHRAE TC 8.10 – Mechanical Dehumidification Equipment and Heat Pipes. He currently also chairs the committee for ASHRAE Standard SPC 198 Method of Test for Rating DX-Dedicated Outdoor Air Systems for Moisture Removal Capacity and Moisture Removal Efficiency.

Craig reports progress was made during these meetings on revisions to the Standard 198 to be compatible with pending changes to the AHRI 920 DOAS efficiency standard. The recent addition of DX-DOAS in ASHRAE 90.1 has prompted the Department of Energy to take a close look at the 920 Standard. The DOE is now considering regulation of DX-DOAS systems for energy efficiency. DOE personnel are interfacing with both SPC 198 as well as the Engineering Committee at AHRI and decisions will be made shortly.

Desert Aire Grow Room Solution Symposium

To better serve customers in the grow room and indoor farming industries, we brought leading scientific experts together with our manufacturer representatives in a high-energy Symposium near our Milwaukee-area headquarters.

One of the most important topics was the urgency of developing advanced strategies for helping customers control vapor pressure deficits. Also, assisting customers with project planning and the sizing and specification of environmental control systems. We also devoted considerable time to discussing the impact of indoor agriculture on the energy industry.

Like a great scientific or technical conference, the dynamic exchange of ideas and information was a joy to witness. There is no doubt customers will benefit from this transfer of knowledge in the months ahead. Thank you to all who took part.

ASHRAE Region VII Chapter Regional Conference, August 2017, Nashville, Tennessee

Paul Stewart, Desert Aire's Director - Sales, Marketing & Service, led the Technical Session at this summer’s ASHRAE Region VII CRC. Region VII includes 14 ASHRAE chapters from the states of Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Paul presented attendees with an overview of building and performance standards relating to Indoor Air Quality and Direct Expansion Dedicated Outdoor Air Systems (DX-DOAS). These included the latest version of ASHRAE Standard 62 – Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality, the recognized standard for ventilation system design and acceptable IAQ.

Paul also detailed the new performance standard AHRI 920, approved in January 2016. This industry effort established a performance standard for DX-DOAS equipment based on the moisture removal efficiency of the products at multiple design rating points. The AHRI 920 standard was added to ASHRAE 90.1 in July 2016. ASHRAE 90.1 provides engineers involved in building design with minimum energy-efficient requirements for the design and construction of new buildings and their systems.

Enhanced materials sourcing with Multistack

HVAC industry insiders may recall Multistack acquired our company at the beginning of this year. Together we are moving forward with aligning our procurement strategies and suppliers to help bring cost efficiencies to our customers. We’re excited about how Multistack’s leadership and capabilities, and the combined buying power of the two companies, is helping us become better companies and with our plans for growth.

Desert Aire trade show calendar

The next best thing to talking with customers face-to-face is talking with dozens of them over the course of a few days at industry trade shows and expositions. Desert Aire has selected several events where we will display our products and equally important, have our sales engineers and application experts available as technical resources on upcoming customer projects. Save the dates -- we plan on exhibiting at the events listed below.

• Council for the Model Aquatic Health Code, October 17-18, 2017 in Denver, CO
• Marijuana Business Conference and Expo, Las Vegas, November 15-17, 2017.
• The International Air-Conditioning, Heating, Refrigerating Exposition (AHR Expo), Chicago, January 22-24, 2018.
• CannaCon Seattle, February 15-17, 2018.

Note we often make non-commercial, lunch-and-learn presentations at local ASHRAE chapter meetings and other professional society gatherings. If your organization would like to have a Desert Aire expert speak to your local peers about a challenge you face, by all means give us a call or use one of our website’s request for information forms. We’d love to be on your calendar.

Desert-Aire.com website enhancements

When we launched our new website at the end of 2016 we were justifiably proud. We’re now presenting information in several ways to help customers provide quality indoor environments to their building users.

This summer we’re working on ways to make finding information easier, enhancing the presentation of product and technical resources, streamlining backend electronic files to increase download speeds, and making our website’s search function more robust.

We’re also tweaking our homepage to enhance the ability of users to find just-uploaded information and increase awareness of Desert Aire news.

So as you can see we’re having a very busy summer. We welcome the opportunities the seasonal nature of the HVAC industry provides us to improve our ability to respond to customer needs. We hope your summer is going as well as ours.

-- Keith Coursin

Photo A: Dr. Nadia Sabeh, known professionally as "Dr. Greenhouse," leads a breakout session at Desert Aire’s Grow Room Solution Symposium. Dr. Sabeh shared her insights as an Agricultural and Mechanical Engineer, focusing on optimizing HVAC systems for controlled environment agriculture.